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So this year, VanWychen Wines has made a second batch of 1,150 gallons of wine in the year-old winery at the family cranberry operation near Warrens.
Last year, Nodji said, "We thought we'd made enough for the whole fall season." But by the second day of the three-day cranberry festival, the supply was virtually gone. The VanWychens sold their wine on property they own, near the festival site in Warrens.
The VanWychens were bottling their second batch last week. It will be sold at their Warrens property during the Sept. 27-29 Warrens Cranberry Festival at the family's Wetherby Cranberry Co. warehouse (which opens to the public Sept. 24), at the cranberry museum gift shop near Warrens and at area stores supplied by Noelke Distributors of La Crosse.
"It went over very well" last fall, said Joe Meehan, sales manager for Noelke Distributors. "People were very receptive to it. We sold out right away." His company will continue to distribute VanWychen cranberry apple wine in La Crosse, Vernon, Crawford, Monroe, Juneau, Buffalo, Trempealeau and parts of Pepin and Sauk counties, Meehan said.
"Hopefully this will take us through Christmas," Jim VanWychen said of the second batch of wine.
"Sales of cranberry apple wine are real good through the Christmas season," Nodji said.
That's because people associate it with the fall cranberry and apple harvest, Jim said, adding that the apples for the VanWychens' wine come from Rex Moseley's Fruit and Vegetable Farm near Warrens. The cranberry juice he uses to make wine comes from Wetherby cranberries.
"It pleases me that it's an all-Warrens product," Nodji said.
"We're promoting its use in cooking, such as for marinating meats," she said. She and her husband hope to eventually make their wine year-round. They have enough equipment to make three batches a year.
Nodji and Jim, both 54, are the sole owners of VanWychen Wines. They are the principal owners of the Wetherby Cranberry Co. - their four children also are part owners of Wetherby.
Wetherby Cranberry Co. started in 1903 and has been in the family since 1972, when Nodji's parents - Ted and Leona Olson - became its owners.
Wetherby grows cranberries and sells about one-third of the crop fresh to the public and to wholesalers. The other two-thirds is sold to a juice processor in New York state. Most of the fresh cranberries are eaten by people in Wisconsin and Minnesota, although the VanWychens sell some by mail order to customers around the nation.
In an average year, Wetherby will harvest about 12,000 barrels of cranberries. There are 100 pounds to a barrel.
"The price of cranberries was pretty good until about three years ago," Jim said, when the supply began outpacing demand.
That gave fresh impetus to their plans to begin making cranberry apple wine. "It's a good value-added product for us," Nodji said of the wine.
For a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a Wisconsin winery made and supplied cranberry apple wine to the VanWychens under their own label. The VanWychens sold it along with fresh cranberries at the Wetherby warehouse. "People really liked the flavor of it," Nodji said.
But the winery closed, and the VanWychens bought equipment and the cranberry apple wine recipe from its owner. The VanWychens were busy with their cranberry business, had to learn about wine making and federal licensing requirements for wineries, and didn't start making cranberry apple wine until last year.
Jim estimated he and Nodji invested about $40,000 to start the wine business. The VanWychens remodeled and equipped part of a metal building on the Wetherby property to create the 20- by 50-foot winery. The project included installing a cement floor, insulating the walls and installing heating and air conditioning.
The VanWychens have three stainless steel fermentation tanks in their winery. After two to three months in the tanks, the wine is stored in 55-gallon plastic drums until it is bottled manually.
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Steve Cahalan can be reached at (608) 791-8229 or scahalan@@lacrossetribune.com.
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